–Trinidad, Guyana examples 
IN POLITICS, they say, particularly party politics, all things are possible. For the major opposition parties of Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, they are currently finding out how possible it is for once very close leadership colleagues to also publicly demonstrate bitterness and hostility against each other – much to the distress of their loyal followers and the amusement of supporters of governing parties.

Both in Trinidad and Tobago and in Guyana, splits in the hierarchical structures of the opposition United National Congress-Alliance (UNC-A) and People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) have deteriorated to levels that expose serious doubts about their capacity to wrest State power from the respective governing parties – People’s National Movement (PNM)  and People’s Progressive Party (PPP).

As this column was being written, the UNC-A’s founder-leader, Basdeo Panday, remained a pale shadow of the once very charismatic and crafty politician, who had managed to successfully lead his party across a traditional race-based electoral divide to replace the PNM that had grown accustomed to holding the reins of State power since 1956.   

Not only has the internal conflicts in the UNC-A destroyed his public image and hopes of the party’s return to power under his leadership, but as of last week, Panday was facing a serious threat of legal action from his once erstwhile colleague, the flamboyant Jack Warner, a name deeply associated with regional and international football.

Warner, a very popular parliamentarian of the UNC-A — of which he is a leading financier, and a political thorn in the side of Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s PNM, was accused by Panday of being in collusion with the Manning administration to undermine opposition unity by fostering divisions within the party, including working to remove him from the leadership helm.  

While Warner was consulting last Wednesday with a high-level legal team, including a British Queen’s Counsel, Allan Newman, and Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj, who had served as Attorney General in a Panday-led UNC administration, Guyana’s Opposition Leader, Robert Corbin was confirming his determination to defend his leadership of the PNCR at its two-day 16th Biennial Congress, which got underway on Friday. 

Overtures were quietly being made to Warner, by some influential figures of both the UNC-A and the society, to postpone his planned legal action against Panday, as all sides of the opposition may end up as ‘losers’, one way or the other.

Murray vs Corbin 
But in Guyana, Corbin, now in his second term as head of the PNCR, was displaying confidence of victory to retain the leadership against a group of some five challengers, whose nominations had been announced although withdrawals were expected before election of office bearers take place. 

However, that confidence may have been contrived to blunt a late initiative by his slate of challengers to withdraw and leave Winston Murray, the party’s former chairman, to be the sole challenger to Corbin.

The prevailing thinking as the congress got underway, was that if the late ‘unity’ of expediency holds, Murray could emerge as the stunning victor, with hopes of fostering a new image to a party badly in need of it, and one likely to pose a more serious challenge to the PPP administration.

The marked difference in the leadership politics of the UNC-A and PNCR is that in the case of the latter, allegations of electoral malpractices kept surfacing. A dictatorial style has been a constant claim against that of Panday. But time for leadership replacement appears to be the common mantra in both of these major parties.

The PNC has long become identified with rigged elections under its late founder-leader, Forbes Burnham and his successor, the late Desmond Hoyte, to maintain a firm grip on State power for 24 years — from 1968 to 1992.

Among the major parties of the Caribbean Community, the PNC, as it was originally known before its ‘Reform’ attachment prior to the 1992 election that marked the restoration of electoral democracy, had acquired the unflattering reputation of having made of electoral malpractices a fine political art. 

It has been consistent in its rejection of accusations of rigged elections to achieve and sustain State power, even in the face of documented reports from national, regional and international monitors of elections in the country.

Ironically, with the spread of its internal conflicts over policies and leadership qualities, it found itself on the defensive against electoral rigging arrangements in the compilation of the register of voters for its previous 15th biennial congress. For last week’s 16th biennial congress, the charges of electoral malpractices were even more fierce and threatening for incumbent leader, Corbin, with the odds still in his favour.  

At the 15th congress,  Corbin, who, as Minister of National Mobilisation under the presidency of Forbes Burnham,  faced a leadership challenge from Vincent Alexander, a longstanding representative of the party on the Guyana Elections Commission and currently Registrar of the University of Guyana.

For last week’s congress, he was facing a slate of five nominated candidates. Among them, prior to a ‘show-of-unity’ media briefing on Thursday, were Dr Richard Van West Charles, a former Health Minister in Burnham’s cabinet and also his son-in-law; and Winston Murray, who had quit the party’s chairmanship last year over disagreements on policies and strategies to replace the PPP in government. 

Van West Charles had emerged as the most fierce and consistent critic of the arrangements for the elections of office bearers, and submitted his concerns to the accreditation committee. 

In rejecting allegations of mischief afoot to maintain the leadership status quo, the party’s secretariat informed the media of arrangements to have the electoral process monitored by a panel of independent and eminent persons  described as ‘friends of the party’.

The indications from some party insiders still pointed in favour of Corbin retaining the leadership. However, the PNC, which has been languishing for the past 17 years in opposition politics, may well have further undermined its chances of replacing the PPP in government at the coming 2011 general election by its deepening internal conflicts over electoral malpractices.

If, in Trinidad and Tobago, the writing for replacement of Panday seems quite clear, in Guyana, the situation for the PNCR is that whoever is officially announced at the 16th congress as leader would know that he faces an enormous task to rebuild confidence among the party’s rank and file to replace the current PPP administration at new general election due in August 2011.